DESCRIPTION: This application seeks renewal of a NRSA training program to train predoctoral students, postgraduate students, and graduate students in periodontal diseases and chronic inflammation. The program is designed to provide a broad spectrum of multi-disciplinary basic and clinical training opportunities that will produce researchers capable of patient-oriented and patient-related research on periodontal and other inflammatory diseases of the oral cavity. The content, level and length of training are designed to produce individuals with a substantive foundation for a competitive research career who can assume university faculty positions where they will teach and conduct independent research relevant to oral health and disease, or fill key research positions in industry. Training will be in the content and use of modern ideas and methods of molecular biology, behavioral science, and bioengineering in investigation of chronic inflammatory periodontal disease. The program is unique in that it pulls together under the Research Center in Oral Biology the training potential of Periodontics, a major clinical department of the School of Dentistry, the Departments of Biochemistry, Microbiology, Immunology, Biological Structure, Pathology, and the Center for Bioengineering of the School of Medicine, the Department of Pathobiology of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, and the Department of Psychology of the School of Arts and Sciences. Most of the participating faculty have worked together for more than one or two decades to conduct this training program over the last 20 years. Three types of trainees will be recruited: predoctoral trainees who will pursue a PhD degree, dentists who also have training in periodontics and seek advanced degree training, and dentists who seek combined training in periodontics and advanced degree training. On occasion, an individual with a PhD may receive postdoctoral training. The program will be under the leadership of Dr. Roy C. Page who will work with 21 participating faculty.